Even if there is an ugly 3 year old Mac-Firefox-bug, this G5-optimized Firefox 1.5 version is definitely worth a look!
a personal website slash blog
Monthly Archive for November, 2005
Today I had to take over some places a collegue marked in Google Earth. Maybe I was too blind or actually too stupid but I was not able find a simple tool for converting KML to an ArcGIS-compatible format. Except FME of course, but that would be the overkill for my purposes. So I wrote a quick and dirty XSLT-hack to convert a KML-file to a very basic CSV-structure, which I could later import as X/Y coordinates to ArcGIS.
I had following structure in Google Earth:
My Places
__Folder
____Placemark 1
____Placemark 2
Saving the folder as kml brought me this file (GE_original.kml).
For some reasons (I’m no XSLT expert) I had to delete the KML namespace declaration and of course add the XSL-stylesheet information. See the modified KML file here (GE_modified.kml).
The XSL-file I wrote you can find here (kml2csv.xsl).
Put your modfied KML file in the same folder as kml2csv.xsl and open it in a XSLT compatible Browser. You should see now coordinates and placemark names in a CSV structure instead of a KML-XML-tree:
Name,X,Y,Z
Placemark 1,13.08349600542125,47.79234503541417,0
Placemark 2,13.27061184961974,47.68484958984244,0
Save it as text file, open it in ArcGIS (or in your prefered GIS client, spatially enabled DBMS, spreadsheet app or wherever you want) and add the X/Y coordinates to your layer. For now the XSLT is limited to placemarks and it only works if your placemarks are contained by exactly one folder – as I said, a quick and dirty hack.
Further improvements to come (as soon as I have some time left):
- the conversion of KML to GML would be a more elegant way
- support of lines and polygons
Google Earth is a nifty tool to create some spatial notes and simple geographic objects. It’s easy to use, offers access to basic geodata but it’s definitely not a tool to produce large and complex geodatasets.
A useful document if you want to create KML files: Google Earth KML Tutorial.
“I believe we need a ‘Digital Earth’. A multi-resolution, three-dimensional representation of the planet, into which we can embed vast quantities of geo-referenced data.”
(Al Gore, Vice president of the United States of America, 1998)
For all who are able to read (and understand) the german language: there is an interesting article by Martin Soutschek about recent development and impacts caused by Google Earth & co on the geo scene available on Runder Tisch GIS e.V.
I totally agree with all outlined points why Google Earth, Google Maps, etc. are “cool” and “sexy”, but I would like to add one more aspect: the deep personal link between user and geo data created by those spatial applications. What I really could observe on people while they where using Google Earth was that they where searching for places they know. Of course this is a well known habit when people use maps, but suddenly people could see their house, hometown, street, etc. from bird’s eye view. All the abstraction, the hard work done by cartographers, was gone. People identified themselves with what they saw on the map, with all the objects displayed on a image of the world as they know it. Without the use of this partial high resolution imagery this effect wouldn’t have occurred. To bind users on a grand scale one has to access subconscious emotions.
Another point is a result of the impressive usability. Those new services are in general fast and easy to use. A result of this handy usability is that people can use this electronic maps in a way they did it with traditional paper maps. Google Earth allows one to add and save marks on the map, people used to mark their personal points of interest on paper maps. Because of the new map media new methods of map use were found. Now it’s possible to see what other people mark on their maps, one can share places. Freely available APIs inspired developments like geotagging, to add coordinates to photos or other web content and link it with certain places. The way how people interact with digital maps is changing. I think people have fun using those maps. Instead of just using maps to find the shortest connection from A to B they certainly enjoy them.
Sure, Web 2.0 is the buzzword of the year, but I think the cartographic adaptation towards Map 2.0 explains somehow the user-centered approach of those new generation spatial applications.
However, it’s hard to predict what’s coming next. If this whole thing is just a huge geo bubble which will implode soon or if geo applications will soon be an essential part of our everday life. Still more interesting is how GIS industry, cartographers, public authorities, etc. will take part in this development and react on the invasion of companies like Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, etc. into their territory.
Another point of view on Google Earth brought in by a colleague (a planner) of me: “Google Earth is the proletarysation of geoinformation” – freely available geoinformation for everyone!
Since I talked to somebody who is responsible for our social security data and I got a picture of how this data is “shared” between certain governmental agencies I really don’t care if somebody is tracking my online activity or not:
An amusing detail are the Google Ads on the site.
Finally I can name a movie with the new James Bond actor Daniel Craig: Layer Cake – a very tough, very stylish and very british gangster movie done by Matthew Vaughn. After watching this movie I got really curious about how the new James Steve McQueen Bond composition will be.
A chronology of Sony’s recently intended self-destruction. I’m looking forward to see what surprises Blue-ray will bring us.
A little sparrow had to give his live to save the most boring tv show of the year!
No joke, the crew of domino day 2005 ordered the execution of a little sparrow because he knocked over a domino. Ok, his action triggered another 23.000 dominos to fall down and apparently somebody lost its nerve there. Even so, is this awful boring tv show worth an animals life?
No! Definitly not! First they kill innocent sparrows and then they torture people for more than 2 hours with uninteresting comments on falling dominos! I just can’t stand this domino day any longer, this is probably the most stupid day ever invented!
Even worse is that we all are sponsoring great domino day with our sophisticated public broadcasting service (ORF). What a waste of money! I wish they would rethink their understanding of entertainment and provide some education in their own productions as they obviously should.
So ESRI is responding to the dynamic Google brought into geo-business. Good, some competion generally helps improving product quality and maybe even increases public awareness of geoinformation. Google already has done an amazing job with releasing Google Maps and Google Earth. Within a few months people who barely knew web mapping got enthusiastic (“I can see my house!”) about those services. Developers took advantage of the freely available API’s and built even more applications (e.g. Geobloggers). In other words, during summer 2005 Google brought plenty of live back to geo-business.
Recently ESRI announced the release of a new product which will be released 2006: ArcGIS Explorer seems to be made to conquer Google Earth. Even though ESRI is the world leading GIS company it’ll be hard for them to make up lost ground on that market. Google released the first beta version of Google Earth at the end of June 2005. Now, 4 months later, Google Earths file format KML (Keyhole Markup Language) is becoming very popular for distributing simple geodata online. MapInfo already officially supports KML and there are certain ways to tell ArcGIS to export KML (through the FME extension or with the help of KML Home Companion for instance). Some companies and authorities are evaluating KML to add it to their existing web services and access the Google Earth community – see the Google Earth section on PortlandMaps.com for some inspiring examples. A quite impressive movement within the last few months, considering that we’re talking about a “home user toy”.
However, it won’t be easy for ESRI to achieve such a high penetration – media appearance, community activities and installations – as Google Earth already has. Just compare news entries or community sites concerning Google Earth with those about NASA’s World Wind. You’ll notice a slight quantitative difference.
Nevertheless ArcGIS Explorer seems to come with some interesting features:
-) the ability to use various online data sources like ArcIMS, OGC WMS, OGC WFS and display them together with local data like GDB’s, shape files, image formats and KML (I think Google Earth Pro can handle some GIS data formats too)
-) it’ll be possible to perform (probably basic) GIS tasks.
Time will tell if home users get attracted by those features or if ESRI will stick to professional users, which is not a bad deal for them at all. Google on the other hand will probably integrate Google Earth and Google Maps closer to its core services, which are by nature targeted on the mass market.
As an ArcGIS user I’m wondering about the way how ArcGIS Publisher, ArcReader and ArcGIS Explorer will work together, whether they complement, substitute or are entirely independent from each other.